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United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Fellowship

Category: Need to Know

Published: 2018-10-26 11:58:19.310

A recent faculty fellowship that aligns social justice and innovation with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) has been touted as an international model for other colleges and universities.

The fellowship was offered in the Summer 2018; faculty were asked to create open pedagogical renewable assignments aligned with one of the 17 SDGs. Fifteen faculty from 12 disciplines across three campuses worked in teams to create the assignments. This semester the assignments are being deployed in 16 courses across 25 sections. More than 570 students are being impacted.

Rajiv Jhangiani, special advisor to the Provost on Open Education at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Vancouver, Canada, highlighted the College's fellowship at OpenCon2018 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City on October 23. A link to the comments are available at https://youtu.be/sNvfsTiurQw.

Open pedagogy, a component of open educational resources (OERs), places students at the center of their academic experience through an experiential learning environment. This unique work has multiple outcomes. At the very minimum, this fellowship brings awareness to students of the service learning opportunities available at the institution and within the community, which may open a door of opportunity for future networking in the labor market. In addition, the interdisciplinary and intercampus requirement of faculty teams is intended to increase the equitable opportunities for students and to maximize student impact across the institution. This work also increases the networking of faculty who may not otherwise know colleagues in other disciplines or on other campuses. Another outcome is that the Creative Commons licensing allows for the assignments and products to be freely shared around the world in order to maximize global change. Lastly, the assignments can help students become agents of change in their own community through their coursework. Consequently, the student learning process becomes more engaging and more collaborative.

Montgomery College continues to see growth in the number of OER or Z-courses offered to students. More than 400 sections with zero instructional material costs have about 8,400 enrollments this semester. Over the past two years, it is estimated the Montgomery College students have saved approximately $2.4 million in textbook costs.